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Portrait of Burmese Advocate’s ‘Stalker’ Emerges

By Robert Mackey May 15, 2009 12:08 pmMay 15, 2009 12:08 pm

Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA photograph released by an official Myanmar news agency shows John William Yettaw, with gray hair, speaking on Wednesday with an American diplomat at a detention center in Yangon, Myanmar.

A bizarre tale that involves Myanmar’s military junta, the revered Nobel laureate they keep under house arrest and an American tourist who swam across a lake to meet her has journalists around the globe scrambling to make sense of it all. On Friday, scraps of information have surfaced about John William Yettaw, the American at the center of the mystery, though as yet no one really has a good answer to the question on everyone’s mind: What was he thinking?

Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTwo undated photographs, released by the government of Myanmar, reportedly taken by John William Yettaw in Yangon of himself and his homemade flippers.

To back up a bit, Mr. Yettaw is apparently an admirer of Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. After he went to great lengths to make an unwelcome visit to her compound last week — swimming across a lake in the night using improvised flotation devices and homemade flippers — the ruling junta used it to charge Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi with violating the terms of her house arrest and moved her to a prison.

As my colleagues Thomas Fuller and Seth Mydans reported from Bangkok on Thursday, Mr. Yettaw’s motives are still unclear, “But he told Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi that he was a Mormon and prayed extensively while he was in her house, one of her lawyers said.”

Jonathan Miller of Britain’s Channel 4 News explained in a blog post and a video report on Thursday that Mr. Yettaw told Burmese exiles in Thailand, before making his trip to Myanmar, that he was writing a book on “faith-based heroism.” Then, Mr. Miller wrote, things got really strange:

In dead of night on 3 May, Mr. Yettaw apparently swam a mile across Rangoon’s Inya Lake, towards the back garden of No 54 University Avenue, where the woman who won democratic elections by a landslide back in 1990, has now spent 13 years and 202 days in what the United Nations has declared “detention illegal under international law”.

Mr. Yettaw was found to be carrying a black torch, folding pliers, a camera and Burmese and US currency. He swam to the house with plastic containers lashed to his arms as flotation aids and a pair of home-made flippers which he photographed after attaching to his open-toed sandals.

The Toronto Globe & Mail reported on Friday that “her supporters say that she had no choice but to offer” the strange visitor a place to sleep “when the flabby 53-year-old – described as a ‘nutter’ and a ‘stalker’ by those who met him – pleaded exhaustion after paddling across a two-kilometre-wide lake to secretly visit her in her home.” The Globe & Mail adds: “On arrival, he reportedly told her that he had come to pray with her.”

On Friday, The Associated Press and CNN spoke to Mr. Yettaw’s family and neighbors in the United States to try to understand what might have motivated his bizarre trip.

The A.P. reports that Mr. Yettaw’s wife, Betty, said at her home in Missouri that her husband made a similar swim across the lake to Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s house last summer, but that her staff kept him from speaking to her on that occasion. Mrs. Yettaw said: “I think that’s what motivated him to go back. He thought he could be in and out.” She also said that Mr. Yettaw is “a very peace-loving person, well-meaning, forgiving, mild-mannered,” and that he “meant the very best for” Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mrs. Yettaw told the A.P.: “I don’t think he could have foreseen that it was going to be such a mess, that they were going to make such a huge deal out of it. He probably thought he would be in and out, and no one would know because that’s what happened before.”

The A.P. adds that: “Before making the latest trip, Yettaw left his 10-year-old and three teenagers with friends, then visited his former wife in California last month and told her he had to go to Asia to work on a psychology paper about forgiveness, according to his ex-wife Yvonne Yettaw.”

Mr. Yettaw’s adult daughter, Carley Yettaw, said on Thursday: “I guess you tend not to think that it will end badly, but I don’t know. I worry about his reputation.” She added: “But I would like people to know that he has no ill intention, that he was not trying to cause harm.”

CNN visited the area where Mr. Yettaw’s mobile home is parked in Falcon, Mo., “about two miles off the nearest gravel road and nearly half a mile from the closest neighbor,” and noted that it was “tucked away in the woods of central Missouri, obscured by tall trees and broken-down cars.” CNN added that a neighbor, Mike Assell, said Mr. Yettaw “was just a very intelligent man to talk to, he was very literate, he had a good vocabulary and you could talk to him and he understood what you were talking about… he was well-read.”

On the Channel 4 News blog, Mr. Miller noted that the incident was “convenient for the paranoiac, unloved tyrants who, it’s speculated, may even have stage-managed this entire incident to provide a pretext for keeping a woman committed to non-violent Ghandian philosophy in what they euphemistically call ‘protective custody.'”

Indeed, some exiles from Myanmar at the Thailand-based opposition magazine Irrawaddy have suggested that Mr. Yettaw was “a pawn,” used by Myanmar’s military rulers as an excuse to extend Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention, which was due to end soon, ahead of elections scheduled for next year. According to an article published on Irrawaddy.org, Ngwe Lin, an exiled opposition leader said “We suspect that the military authorities turned a blind eye when the guy swam across Inya Lake.” The article also noted the strange fact that news of the incident was not announced by Myanmar’s government but “leaked” in a government newspaper and then amplified when “the story was quickly picked up by junta-friendly blogs set up by the Ministry of Information.”

As Mr. Fuller and Mr. Mydans explained on Thursday, the 2010 election is to be “the first multiparty poll since 1990, when Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, won an overwhelming victory but was denied power by the military, which has ruled since 1962.”

I honestly do not know what to think about this. It would seem to me that anyone with common sense would know what a risk such a visit would be. I am having a hard time seeing this as anyone other than an awful example of self-promotion and arrogance. Religion and prayer aside…this man’s actions could do great damage.

I can’t express a reasoned argument right now because this just brings me to such a boil. We have to demand justice instead of bowing to an oppressive, senseless and sadistic regime. My thoughts go out to all the families involved in this tragic story.

Look, the problem is not this guy swimming across the lake, he’s an American – we view that kind of stuff as our individual liberty and right. Its not his fault the Burmese government is backwards and ignorant. These dictatorships can only make the news by looking like the bad guy, otherwise they’re laughed out of IR. This is more a stunt on their part than anyone else.

It’s simple— he was acting alone,and it was just a weird or deluded or fanatical act borne of some strange ideas in his head. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t realize how the Myanmar ‘govt’ would view this act. I’m sure he didn’t think that this would cause great trouble for Aung San Suu Kyi. Of course, it will. But it is plain silly to try to find some connection between him and the Myanmar dictatorship, or some pre-existing connection between him and ASSK. He needs some serious psychological help, and his kids need a guardian for now.

This thoughtless and odd action is perhaps being used as a pretext by the oppressive regime to continue the detention of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. At the very least the regime is harassing this brave and peaceful woman.

While the whole story may never be out, if he was working with someone and if so whom, but the simple point is that this was stupid from top to bottom. Anyone with any kind of knowledge about the political state of the country would know that merely holding a conversation on the streets is like walking on egg shells, let alone trying to contact the junta’s #1 enemy. Pushed forward or not, this man found the lone way to take Aung San Suu Kyi’s situation from bad to worse. Congrats for playing with the lives of others for the sake of a paper and prayer, both of which could have been done at home.

The Burmese military dictatorship used the deluded American tourist’s uninvited swim as a pretext to further imprison Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi. If this event had not occurred, they would have come up with some other pretext to further deny Burmese democracy. The dictatorship has no love for the Burmese people, and the hatred is reciprocated.

I strongly suspect that if Mr. Yettaw had not provided the opportunity, the junta would have found some other reason or excuse to make accusations against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as a reason for continuing her detention and removal from political life. Nonetheless, it appears to me that he put his own selfish desire to further his purpose or cause without any regard to what harm he might cause to her. And definitely violated the laws of Myanmar and what would be reasonable laws in any other nation, including the U,S., concerning illegal entry.

This man’s delusions of grandeur – the notion that Ms Suu Kyi somehow needed his intervention – has made her already fraught situation inestimably worse. Shame on him for having the hubris to think she required his personal spiritual guidance; good intentions are no excuse for such presumptuousness. If anything, he has made himself a godsend to the despicable junta that keeps Ms Suu Kyi prisoner.

The only ray of hope I can garner from this episode is the thought that if a lone fool can pull off such a misguided mission, then perhaps a highly trained ‘special ops’ team of Burmese patriots could penetrate the junta’s defenses and ‘take out’ the hated dictator Than Shwe. Cutting off the head of the snake might be all it takes to bring about a quantum shift to true representative democracy in Burma.

The U.S. government, of course, would disavow any knowledge of this team’s actions or training.

The American hero (Brad Pitt) has been atracted to the Burmese Nobel winner for years, and decides that it´s time to save her (Anne Boleyn) frm the jawsof the horribible and unfair dictatorship….He will take her across the sea to a ticker tape parade in New York city and proclaim the joys and benefits of democracy— A small cameo is played by Bourne supremacist who is in charge of getting all the money needed to bribe a nasty burmese officer…..etc. C

There is a different way to veiw this ,It is really a stroke of luck .. now there is a new BURMA platform Saffron Monks Cyclone and Now this .. Obama today Drew a line in the sand for the first time reguarding Burma ;case in point ‘..

While involvement from the Burmese Government, as indicated in some comments, cannot be ruled out, at least by letting it happen right under their nose, neither can involvement by the well funded US based Burma lobby in arranging this bizare scheme. The Obama administrations indication of a change in US policy towards Burma is a threat to influentual groups in the US that thrives on the current policy of sanctions. An end to the international policy of sanction and opening for a dialogue is a threat to the Burma lobby that would see its funds drying up and mission coming to an end, as much as it is a threat to the Burmese generals.

There is something wrong with trespassing, regardless of what country you are in and your intentions. He was wrong to do it and if he knew what the penalty for doing so beforehand, then he deserves to spend some time in a Burmese jail before being deported. Shame on him.

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